C. What Works of Life an Angel can Exercise in an Assumed Body

10. On the third point [n.6] I say that an angel can cause all local motion in an assumed body - and so the motion that seems to be by progress, the motion too that would be of inhaling and exhaling, the motion of eyelids and hands and the like. And the reason is that there is no imperfect body in the universe that does not have in its active virtue some ‘where’; the point is plain about a heavy body with respect to the center; therefore much more does an angel have this with respect to a body.

11. But of the natural operations that consist in doing and undergoing, of which sort are the sense operations - an angel has no power for these, because these are not of a nature to be received save in a thing composed of an organic body (at least a perfectly mixed one) and of a soul, to the extent the soul has perfective power; and neither of these is present there [sc. in the imperfectly mixed body assumed by an angel], neither such mixture nor perfecting soul - and so in such a composite body there is simply no sensation. The operations too that consist truly in true action, of which sort are the vegetative operations, do not belong to that composite body, because these operations are of a nature to belong to an animate composite body (which is not the sort there), or of a nature to belong to a perfectly mixed body (for example, if flesh were to generate flesh [sc. by nutrition]); but neither exists there.

12. Now as to the knowing which the angel seems to have about particular facts, hearing or seeing them, this is nothing other than intellection; and the angel can express that intellection by forming words and moving the tongue locally. As to the vegetative acts too that appear - if we are speaking of true nutrition, nothing there is nourished; but if we speak of the eating that precedes nutrition, it is nothing other than the division of the food by the local motion of the jaws and the drawing of it into the stomach by local motion (and then the exhaling and resolving of it into humors and elements can take place) - and these local movements can be done in a body by the active virtue of an angel.

13. And as has been said about the nutritive power, so must it be said about the power of growth, because there is no nutrition or growth there; however there can be juxtaposition there, if the angel wishes suddenly to add elements - which can be imperfectly mixed for such imperfect mixture - to his [assumed] body, so that it may seem to grow.

14. And should you say, ‘if eating is not an operation of life, then the argument about Christ’s eating with his disciples - to prove his true resurrection [Luke 24.41-42, Acts 10.40] - is not valid, which is against the saints,’ I reply:

There are many other arguments in the Gospel more efficacious than this one to prove Christ’s resurrection - and this one, along with the others, does well prove it, although not by itself alone. Or I say that Christ’s eating was a true eating, ordered to true nutrition, because it is not unacceptable to me that a glorious body could convert non-glorious body into itself, just as it can exist together with a non-glorious body. Nor is it corruptible for the reason ‘that it can convert another into itself’; for God could make a glorious body in the smallest quantity and grow it through eating, and yet nothing of what was nourished or grown would be corrupted. But in the sort of bodies assumed by angels there is no nutrition or improvement but only addition and juxtaposition.

15. However, as to the generative power, one must say that this happens by virtue of semen, deposited by the father into the woman, in which is preserved the virtue of the father, as is commonly said. If a bad angel can get that semen from another - by being a succubus - and keep it in its natural quality (agreeable to its natural generation) until he transfers it, he himself does nothing there save that he first receives (in the assumed body) what is moved locally by its being deposited, and then he moves this locally to another part where he is an incubus; and if the semen has not lost its natural quality before it is received in the mother, then generation can happen through it just as if it were immediately transferred by the first depositor into the same mother. And in this way is generation attributed, not indeed to a good angel (because far be it from a good angel to mix himself up in such vileness), but to a demon, whom it befits to generate like this -because the same demon, first a succubus and then an incubus, receives the semen transferred by the first depositor and next transfers it into the mother.